The present invention relates to a disposable wearing article adapted for absorption and containment of bodily wastes.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 1999-318976 (hereinafter referred to as “Citation”), there has already been proposed a disposable wearing article configured by a front waist region, a rear waist region, a crotch region extending between these two waist regions, longitudinally opposite end portions extending across the respective waist regions in a transverse direction and transversely opposite side edge portions extending between the front and rear waist regions in a longitudinal direction. The wearing article comprises a liquid-pervious topsheet facing the article wearer's skin, a liquid-impervious backsheet facing away the article wearer's skin, a pair of liquid-impervious leak-barrier sheets normally biased to rise above the topsheet under a contractile force of stretchably elastic members extending in the longitudinally direction and attached in stretched state to the respective leak-barrier sheets, a liquid-absorbent core interposed between the top- and backsheets so as to extend between the front and rear waist regions and formed with a plurality of raised ridges, each extending in the transverse direction, spaced apart one from another by a predetermined dimension in the longitudinal direction, and a sheet member attached to the upper surface of the topsheet so that this sheet member may rise up above from the upper surface of the topsheet.
The raised ridges are formed in a rear half of the crotch region divided by a transverse center line bisecting a longitudinal dimension of the article and in the rear waist region. In this known article, it is claimed that loose passage discharged onto the article in the rear half of the crotch region and in the rear waist region is prevented by the raised ridges and the sheet member from flowing forward into a front half of the crotch region and further flowing forward into the front waist region whereby the article wearer's genital organ is protected from being contaminated with loose passage.
However, the article disclosed in Citation creates a problem such that the sheet member may readily collapse as the wearer's body weight is exerted on the crotch region which is thereby compressed into the wearer's crotch region transversely inward. The sheet member having collapsed in this manner can no more function as a barrier adapted to prevent loose passage from further flowing beyond this barrier and consequentially loose passage may flow beyond this sheet member into the front half of the crotch region and even into the front waist region. In the case of this wearing article, the article wearer's genital organ is always in contact with the outer surface of the topsheet during use of the article, so the wearer's genital organ may be contaminated with loose passage spreading over the outer surface of the topsheet if loose passage flows into the front half of the crotch region and further into the front waist region.